I went to the grocery store today to look for a cake for what would have been my grandmother’s 71st birthday.  As I was using the self-checkout, I saw something that has never failed to annoy me.  People using one of the other checkout had taken some of their items off the bagging shelf and the weight-sensitive part of the checkout had stopped.  As usual, they got annoyed at it and started yelling at the poor attendant who tried to explain that, as the instructions said, you shouldn’t remove anything from the weight-sensitive shelf until you had paid.

It occurred to me that although these people were my age, they didn’t seem to understand the cold machine logic of automata.  Even within a single generation, we are starting to see tiered technology adoption rates.  By this, I mean that just because someone is your own age, you can no longer assume that they are able to operate technology in a similar way.

One hundred years ago, you bought groceries by going to the store and telling the clerk what you wanted.  At some later point, the goods would be delivered to your house and a bill would be presented to you. Fifty years ago, in most urban areas, you paid and picked up the groceries at the same time.  Twenty five years ago, credit cards revolutionized the process by delinking the payment and the pickup.  At each of these points, the regular customers of a given store would have been familiar with the process.

However, today, as the rate of technological innovation and adoption is continually increasing.  Though there are many of us who believe we are able to “ride the wave”, an increasing number of people are falling behind.  These people form tiers of technological ability; each tier is capable and comfortable with a certain level of technology but is resistant  or incapable of moving up to the next tier.

Unlike previous eras, we do not simply have two or three tiers of users in our workforces.  We have many more than that: people who regularly use e-mail but not instant messages, people who use instant messages but not collaborative documents, people who use collaborative documents but not wikis, etc.  The progression is no longer hierarchical either.  Some user groups may be comfortable with technologies A, B, and C alone while another group is comfortable using A, C, and D alone.

Where does this path lead us?  We already see that the level of technology you are comfortable using plays a major role in your career.  However, it will start to play a role in other aspects of your life as well.  People living in cities will have to be capable of significant mental dexterity as these are the hubs of technological adoption.  There is likely to be some measure of (unintentional?) discrimination against slow adopters.  We already see some of this as banks charge higher fees to customers who do not sign-up for electronic billing only.  In one extreme view, people may “ghetto-ize” themselves by choosing to live in neighborhoods or locales with a given standard of technology.

Another alternative would be choosing an arbitrary level of technology and forcing people to use nothing below or above the range.

Perhaps the future isn’t so dark though.  Companies usually have a vested interest in reaching the widest possible customer base.  In this sense, free market capitalism could be an unexpected savior.  Since the costs of doing business rise significantly with each concurrent implementation of technology, companies will likely be increasingly resistant to adopting the newest and best forms of technology until enough of a user base has formed for those technologies.  We can see this in Microsoft’s Windows Vista; companies resist adopting this new operating system partly because they don’t want to retrain staff and rethink subsidiary technologies.

Simplicity is king… but so is utilizing the newest technology. I suspect we will see companies tiered just like users.  Some firms/industries/stores may appeal to the low-end of adopters while others will reach out to the high-end.  This means taking a hard look at the so-called “core demographic” for each firm and industry in order to determine what the appropriate level of technological adoption should be.

All these “solutions” seem to represent a braking effect on the speed of new innovations and their concomitant adoption.  Is it possible that society can adapt to an ever-increasing number of technology tiers? Or will technology adoption need to be slowed?

Tags: Microsoft